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DRESS Given at 
the Tijvo Hundredth 
Anniversary of the 
Founding' of the First 
Church of Christ in Ber- 
wicK. j^ j^ jS^ J^ 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY REV. GEORGE LEWIS, D. D. 

WEDNESDJiY, JVME 4th, I902 

AT the: 

TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 

OF the: founding of the: 

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 

IN SOUTH BERWICn 

MAINE 



SOUTH DER"WICR 

The Independent Press 

1902 






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O. 1-. MiY 



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ODERN church life in our own State has 
roots that run back into a somewhat 
complex, and certainly a very curious 
condition of things in the seventeenth 
century. The early history of Maine 
reads very differently from the early history of Massa- 
chusetts. They were Pilgrims and staunch Congre- 
gational christians who came over in the Mayflower and 
formed the Plymouth colony. They were Puritans 
from England, who were driven thence by the exactions 
and the petty persecutions of Eaud, who came to Boston 
and vicinit}^ and formed the Massachusetts colony. 
They were organized churches which came across the 
water, and they came to Massachusetts Bay as both 
Church and State in one. They meant to be and they 
were a Theocracy as truly as were the Israelites in the 
days of David. It was a kingdom of God they came to 
America on purpose to establish. No bauble of wealth 
dangled before the imagination of these Puritans to lure 
them from their homes on the other side to the bleak 
shores, the dark woods and the deep snows of Massa- 
chusetts. They came to worship God in their own way 
and to make others worship him in their way too so far 
as they were able. But religion played no part in the 
early settlement of Maine. Here it was the prospedts 
of trade that were opened and the hope of large gains 
that drew the brilliant and hardy adventurers to the 

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region of country lying between the Piscataqua and the 
Kennebec. Capt. John Smith had been here and he 
had stirred the hearts of his countrymen and set many 
of them on edge with a longing for the Piscataqua 
valley and the rich furs and fish and fields of the 
region. Men came here to trade and grow rich and 
then to go back home again, as many of them did. But 
some came and stayed and the little settlements along 
the river and along the seacoast grew and prospered. 
By and by Sir Ferdinando Gorges got the consent of 
King Charles the First to the control and to a large 
part of the emoluments of this whole tract of country 
between us and the Kennebec river. He certainly 
meant to grow rich out of this new land, and the King 
was willing he should. This grant was given Gorges 
in 1639. Gorges, as well as the King, was a loyal 
church of England man. and the intention of all these 
contracting parties was to establish that church here, 
so as to offset if possible the influence of the Puritan 
church in Massachusetts. But at the time this charter 
to Gorges was confirmed the church of England was in 
a very squall}' condition at home. King Charles and 
Archbishop Laud were getting into deep waters of 
difficulty. Pym and Fairfax and Cromwell were com- 
ing, and were already above the horizon. Within two 
years Strafford was beheaded; five years after this date 
Laud was beheaded, and within ten years the King 
himself was brought to the block. Of course during 
these years of trouble and of disaster to the English 
church there was neither time nor power to develop any 
of the interests of Episcopacy over here. There was 

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therefore no organized church life at all on this 
territory, though there was quite a population here. 
Gorges's charter was a dead letter from the beginning 
so far as any ecclesiastical development went. After the 
death of Charles, Cromwell was the power in England. 
Then as a matter of course Gorges's charter died, and 
we were given up to Massachusetts that the Massa- 
chusetts idea of church and of religion might be put in 
here and made to grow. I can not help thinking that it 
was a most fortunate and blessed thing for the Province 
of Maine that she passed that early into the jurisdi(5lion 
of Massachusetts, for to that transference we clearly 
owe the organization of all the earlier churches of the 
State. The question was not then as to which of the 
two systems, the Congregational or the Episcopal, 
should be born and should grow here. There was no 
choice. It was the church of the Massachusetts type, 
or it was no church at all. And I do not believe that 
there is any one either then or now, not even Arch- 
bishop Laud himself, who would not say that a Puritan 
church was better than none. For one I do not believe 
that any other form of organized church life was so well 
adapted to the free and strong development of the early 
and at that time quite uncouth republican institutions 
as was the Congregational church. It was a great 
blessing to the Province of Maine in every respedl that 
Massachusetts took it under her own control. So soon 
as this transference was made the religious interests of 
Maine began to be looked after. 

The government of this province was assumed by 
Massachusetts in 165 1 or 1652. As the government 

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changed, so to some extent did the names of places and 
the customs of people. Gorgianna then became 
York, and the old region of Piscataqua became Kittery. 
This latter included the present towns of Kittery, Eliot 
and the three Bervvicks. The very names York and 
Kittery testify to that historic, and for us momentous, 
change of jurisdi(5lion. Very soon ministers appeared 
all through the region and along the coast eastward 
preaching the gospel according to Massachusetts Bay. 
Harvard College, organized originally for the sake of 
an educated ministry, sent her graduates to do this 
work. Each military fort, wherever it was, was sup- 
plied at once with a pious and learned chaplain. Court 
sitting in this county issued its edicfl that all the 
English children born in the distri<5l should be bap- 
tized. It was indeed a great thing for the coming 
State. It gave both diredlion and color to her de- 
velopment. Matters here began to keep time and step 
not with the thought of London but with the thought of 
Boston, not with the bishops of old England but with 
the bishops of New England, the Cottons, the Mathers, 
etc. Under the earlier (the Gorges) regime John 
Wheelwright, a near relative of Ann Hutchinson of 
famous memory, a classmate and friend of Oliver 
Cromwell, driven away from Boston, lighting at Exeter 
and then driven away from there, had himself with his 
friends and (judged by the Boston standard) with his 
heresies found lodgment a few miles east of us in the 
present town of Wells. There his form of faith had 
flourished well for a time, but now the Massachusetts 
authorities stepped in, dissolved the organization with 

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Historical Address. 



a word, and then publicly proclaimed it to be dead. 
The present church in Wells therefore is not in any 
sense the John Wheelwright church. But another 
church was gathered there and duly organized and 
started on its mission to the future in October, 1701. 
Maine may well claim to be a puritan State then, not 
because of the charadter of her early settlements, but 
because Massachusetts legislated and preached her into 
Puritanism; not because of the churches that were 
transported here in bulk from the mother land, but 
because of the godly and learned men from the rising 
halls of Harvard who on horseback or on foot travelled 
from here to Fort Popham preaching the gospel to the 
farmers, fishers and trappers alike and baptising their 
children. All honor to Massachusetts that thus made 
Maine as good as herself, and perhaps a little better, 
for while we had her puritanism, yet taking it as we 
did by the way of inoculation, we had no doubt a 
larger breadth of vision and greater charity of spirit. 

Now out of this condition, out of this soil that had 
been prepared for the growth of churches, churches 
began to grow. The church is not always the breaking 
up plow in civilization. It is sometimes the plant that 
springs up from an already prepared soil, and ripens 
the seed for other churches yet to be. A church was 
formed in York quite a number of years before one was 
formed here. Perhaps this was because the people who 
lived in York were better affedled toward the ordinances 
of faith than were those who lived on the Newichi- 
wannock. I hardly think it, however. I suspecft it was 
because York was on the coast and was much more 

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Historical Address. 



easily reached by preachers from Boston and Salem and 
Newburyport than the inland villages were. That was 
the old Gorgianna too and would therefore quite 
naturally be regarded by the missionary as, what we 
would call today, a strategic point for a church, 
planting a church in the very capital of a province so to 
speak. But if to be on the coast was such an advan- 
tage, why not then let the next church be organized at 
Kittery Point? Why, because Kittery lay right be- 
tween Portsmouth and York, and the people of Kittery 
were in reachable distance of either for an attendance 
at meeting and for a minister to baptize their children 
and to bury their dead. The next move therefore was 
in this direction. Here at Quamphegan, on the New- 
ichiwannock, and up the Great Works for three-quarters 
of a century men had been living and working. They 
were men of brawn ; the}' were men of brain ; they were 
men of dauntless courage ; they were men of vigorous 
enterprize and thrift. They had come into the wilder- 
ness to subdue it. They feared neither the gloomy 
woods, nor the prowling savages, nor the wild beasts, 
nor the tumbling cataradls of the rivers. These things 
should all be their servants and not their masters. 
The Indians should bring them furs. The beasts 
should be their food. The river falls should turn the 
wheels and drive the saws that should convert the 
woods into lumber. This was both skill and enter- 
prise. I am sure if any place on the continent has 
reason to be proud of its forefathers, South Berwick 
has. Those men knew what they wanted, and they 
knew how to bring it to pass. Their story is one of 



Historical Jt d d re s s . 

thrilling interest for it shows the rare charadler and 
quality of the men. The simple story of the old saw 
mill built on the Great Works river, that gave its name 
to the river and to the surrounding region (and may 
that name never be displaced) the first mill of the sort 
in the whole country so far as I know, is a story to 
rouse in every soul an ardent admiration for the men of 
those times. The men of this region were men of 
strong charadler and of great enterprise. They had a 
large amount of what we would call native force. 
Energy always attradls energy. Strong and capable 
men, without effort, almost unconsciously draw or drift 
together into association. They were a fine stock that 
in the seventeenth century lived and labored and 
prospered at Quamphegan and Old Fields, or as it had 
then come to be called, the parish of Unity. They 
were men of executive power, and were ready and 
willing to assume large responsibilities whether of 
church or state. 

In the year 1674 a boy was born in what is now 
Ipswich, Mass., whose father's name was Wade, and 
the baby was christened John. He bore the name of an 
Apostle, and he somehow soon felt that to be an 
Apostle was his own mission. He was a boy of quick 
parts intelle(5lually, and graduated from Harvard Col- 
lege at the age of nineteen. There was no Theological 
Seminary standing in his way and he passed speedily 
from recitations in the college to exhortations in the 
woods. He early attradled the notice of the Governor 
and Council of Massachusetts, and was by them sent to 
the East. Though hardly more in years than a boy he 

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Historical Address. 



had gained standing as a doctor of medicine as well as 
preacher, and he was sent to the military fortress at 
Pejepscott, now Brunswick, as chaplain and physician 
to the garrison. We wish we could have seen John 
Wade as in 1699 or 1700, he a youth of twenty-five, 
enthusiastic and glowing because he was young, grave 
and dignified because he was a puritan clergyman, 
came here to preach and to crystallize the religious 
sentiment of the place into an organic form. Mr. Wade 
must have been a man not only of rich mental attain- 
ments but of great strength and unusual balance of 
charadler. I have already spoken of that principle of 
attraction that always draws into association men of 
like quality and charadler. I have no doubt it was the 
rare charadler of the people here that brought so rare a 
man into their company. He was welcomed and loved 
at once. In 1701 the question of a church organization 
was freely canvassed. Mr. Wade in his record saj's he 
discoursed to the people very plainly about the advan- 
tage and significance of church ordinances. Rev. Mr. 
Greenleaf, who some eighty years ago published an 
Ecclesiastical History of Maine, in his comments upon 
the organization of this church, speaks of the remark- 
able prudence and wisdom of Mr. Wade, holds him up 
as an example to ministers of modern daj's and says 
that if his course were imitated many church strifes and 
schisms might be prevented. Mr. Wade was young in 
years but evidently ripe in judgment. His own 
account of the formation of this church is very brief, 
very simple, and very touching, and I think I can not 
do better than to quote it entire. After the record of 

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Historical Address. 

meetings holden during the preceeding months, where- 
in a creed which was rather a catechism had been 
taught and learned, he proceeds — "March 2, 1702, was 
our meeting when after thanksgiving to God for such a 
prospe(fl of his favor as was before us and imploring his 
assisting and succeeding grace in our enterprise, I gave 
an account of the satisfaction I had received of them 
severally. Repeating over the above said questions to 
them and the sum of their answers amounting to an 
entire confession of faith in the fundamental articles of 
Christianity. Telling them that they were severally 
conscious of my dealing with them as above said, and 
as eac/i had expressed his answer, so all had as to the 
substance thereof, so that they were all professedly of 
one faith. I then propounded whether they were 
satisfied as to the conversation of one another? They 
signified that they were. Upon which I read to them a 
confession-of-faith-church covenant to which they joy- 
fully assented. Then after renewing a word of warning 
and exhortation to them, we agreed to keep a day of 
public Fasting and Prayer on June 4th and so dis- 
missed them with prayer." "June 4, 1702. Being Fast 
Day the Rev. Mr. Pike Pastor of the church of Christ at 
Dover, Mr. Saml. Emery Pastor of the church of Wells 
and Mr. Saml. Moody Pastor of the church of Christ at 
York coming to our assistance : after prayer and a 
sermon (Mr. Pike preached) then for our dire(5lion Mr. 
Pike etc. taking cognizance of our proceedings and 
seeing all their assent to the articles of faith and form 
of covenant — then publicly read — and their satisfaction 
one with another, pronounced them a church of Jesus 

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Christ, upon which they signified their choice of J. 
Wade as their Pastor." The next record is "Nov. i8, 
1702, Mr. John Wade was ordained Pastor," and the 
next record, by another hand, "Nov. 13, 1703, Died the 
Rev. Mr. John Wade." It is pathetic. One can 
hardly keep back the tears as he reads these brief 
notices and tries to realize how much of history they 
mean. God be thanked for that young man who had 
so devotedly and so wisely done his work and had gone 
home to his reward before he had reached the age of 
thirty. 

The church was organized, and the men, who at 
this meeting signed their names to the covenant which 
had been prepared by Mr. Wade, were these: Daniel 
Goodin, Peter Grant, Maj. Jos. Hammond, Ichabod 
Plaisted, Chas. Frost, Jos. Hammond, Jr., Henry 
Nock, John Fernald, Peter Staple, Danl. Emery, 
Nathan Lord, Benoni Hodsdon, Job Emery, Abram 
Lord, Richard Tozer, Saml. Small, John Gowen. 
Seventeen men they were. Men of character and 
repute they were. Men of social standing they were. 
They were men who had just been publicly acknow- 
ledged by the assembled citizens as worthy to take this 
place by reason of their high christian characfler, and 
also by reason of their social influence. They were in 
every respect fit men. It was not the vote alone of a 
small church committee either that pronounced them fit 
to be members of Christ's bod^^ but it was the sen- 
timent of the Town. These men were held in high 
esteem all the way from Kittery Point to Baunabeag. 
The formation of the church was a momentous matter, 

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and was so judged. It deeply interested every man, 
woman and child in Ancient Piscataqua, and especially 
those who dwelt in the parish of Unity. After the 
faithful house to house labors of Mr. Wade no one 
could be ignorant of the vital significance of the 
movement, or indifferent to it. After his thorough 
teaching there was no one who did not have some 
intelligent idea of how that church was going to 
ennoble, was going to build into a finer charadler, and 
shape to higher issues the whole municipal strudlure of 
the future. They felt that that was largely what the 
coming church was for. The whole region had come to 
feel that as there was in nature a law of crystallization 
that built the diamond, so there was a moral force to be 
exerted through this new church upon society at large 
which should almost resistlessly draw it into harmony, 
and shape it into a great glory, and the popular verdidl 
was, "These seventeen men are fit to do this. These 
seventeen men are fit to hold from God, and to adminis- 
ter for the general good, this mighty power to shape 
and build society." Not a dissenting voice was heard. 
These men were considered fit by unanimous consent. 
It was a great tribute to the moral standing and worth 
of these men that nobody had aught to say against 
them, that they took a position manifestly so onerous 
with the unbroken amen of a town in their favor. Had 
they lived in our own day they would have been called 
charter members of the church. But two hundred years 
ago they were christened by that infinitely richer and 
more pregnant name Fouridation Brethren. That name 
is a perpetual witness to the high esteem in which these 

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men were held. They were men of such characler that 
together they formed an association promising great 
things for the future. If you see the foundation of a 
building laid by a wise architecfl you may know from 
that foundation what is the general characler of the 
proposed struclure. Flimsy foundations are not put 
under great temples or beneath great capitols. These 
seventeen men and the faith they professed were 
regarded by the public sentiment of Ancient Piscataqua 
as a foundation promising a future strucflure of charac- 
ter and life that would be both solid and high. The 
phrase no doubt was Mr. Wade's, and it is another 
token of his fine perception that he saw the difference 
between a mere charter member which means little, and 
a foundation brother which means the ages yet to be. 
Mr. Wade was a rare prophet. Within less than a year 
from the church's birth fifteen women had united with 
it making the church membership thirty-two at the time 
of the pastor's death. The church chose as its first 
deacons Daniel Emery and Nathan Lord. They were 
chosen May 20, and at that time two silver cups, a table 
cloth and napkins were given to the church by Capt. 
Ichabod Plaisted to furnish the Communion Table. 
The other cups of the old and dearly loved service were 
given not long after, each piece inscribed with the 
donor's name. As we look today at that service we feel 
that our fathers gave of their best to the Lord, for out 
of their poverty they gave the solid silver. 

Four years now came and went without a pastor 
and without any additions. As a matter of course 
there were services holden in the church with greater 

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or less regularity during that time. We are not 
told so in the record, neither are we told that peo- 
ple ate their breakfasts and dinners, but all the 
same we know they did. We can not help being 
impressed with the beauty of the tribute the church 
paid to Mr. Wade by their non-adlion for four years 
as well as by their adlion. They must have loved 
that man with no common love, for after his burial they 
would ask no other man to take his place as pastor 
unless it were one who had been born in the same 
village with him and educated in the same school. 
Those conditions were met in the person of Mr. 
Jeremiah Wise who was ordained here in 1707, and the 
first name added to the church roll after his advent is 
the honored name of Timothy Wentworth. Mr. Wise 
remained and wrought faithfully and well for almost 
half a century, when full of years and honors he fell 
asleep. He left the rare and radiant beauty of our own 
Old Fields for the more beautiful city on high where 
there is no night. That Mr. Wise was a man peaceful 
and quiet in his disposition is proven by the fact of his 
long and prosperous pastorate. That he was a man of 
decision of charadler and eminently wise in council is 
proven by the fadl that he was so often sought as a 
helper and adviser in church difficulties, and that his 
counsel was so apt to be followed ; and that he was a 
learned preacher is evident from the many great 
occasions in different parts of the country when he gave 
the sermon. During this man's pastorate here the 
churches at Kittery Point, Eliot and Blackberry Hill 
were formed. These were the immediate children of 

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Historical Jiddress. 



this church, and each one took a goodly number of 
members from this organization. When Mr. Wise 
came here there were three churches in what is now the 
State of Maine, when he died there were at least sixteen 
churches, and with the creation of almost all of them 
Mr. Wise had something to do, being especially prom- 
inent in the organization of those in Scarborough and 
in Portland. One of the leading Massachusetts clergy- 
men at the time of his death left a list containing the 
names of those men of very superior wisdom whom he 
had known, and the name of Mr. Wise of Berwick is in 
that list. 

At this point occurs a very significant passage in 
the story of the church. From the beginning the 
pastor has adled as the clerk. It ought not to be so, 
but so it is. Mr. Wise died on the 20th of January. 
On the 25th, which was probably the day after the 
funeral, the church met and voted that the record 
should be put into the hands of the deacons, and the 
next day we have this minute : 

"Received of John Wise the Records of 
the ist church of Berwick kept by his father 
the Revd. Mr. Jereh. Wise." 

Signed by the deacons of said church, 

Benjn Libby, 
Daniel Hmery, 
Ichabod Goodwin, 
Humphrey Chadbourne, Jr. 

I say it is significant for it shows with what 
scrupulous care these records were kept. Had records 

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generally been guarded with equal care, history that is 
written today would be far less the result of imagina- 
tion than it now is. 

Early in the following autumn Mr. Jacob Foster, 
another Harvard graduate, was ordained. Mr. Foster 
seems to have been a very good and faithful man, a 
man certainly of ability and earnest in his ministra- 
tions. But the times were evil. There were wars and 
rumors of wars on every hand, and the children of God 
must either fight or flee. Here they preferred to fight. 
The seven years war was on in Europe — England and 
France, Protestant and Catholic were wrestling with all 
their might to see which would fling the other. Per- 
haps no part of the world suffered from that war more 
keenly than we did here. We did not call it the seven 
years war, we called it the French and Indian war. 
Louisburg had been taken not long before this, taken 
under the lead of a Piscataqua man. Sir William 
Pepperell, accompanied by a goodly number of men 
from Berwick, and this had made our valley a marked 
spot for the Frenchman's venom a little later. It was a 
time when savages in their war paint were lurking in 
the woods to kill the passer by, when families could not 
retire at night with any assurance of being alive the 
next morning, when men plowing in their fields might 
expedl at any moment to see their houses in flames and 
their children scalped. It was a time when at one 
extreme of our territory Braddock and Washington 
were terribly defeated by the foe, and at the other 
extreme Wolf had taken Quebec from the same foe and 
changed the fortune of a continent. It was the period 

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Historical Address. 



of a growing fridlion between the colonies and the 
mother country, a time when we were getting ready for 
our Revolutionary war. Under these conditions of 
intense stress, it is not strange that church services 
languished, and that the numbers added to the Com- 
munion under Mr. Foster were fewer than they had 
been under Mr. Wise. The note of war, the scream of 
fife and tuck of drum did for a time rise higher than the 
gospel's joyful sound. Even the pulpits of the land 
became sounding boards calling for military recruits. 
In 1777 this war feeling had here risen so high and 
become so strong that it swept the Rev. Mr. Foster out 
of the Berwick pulpit and bore him into the patriot 
army as chaplain of one of the regiments under 
Washington. Seventy-five years earlier Mr. Wade had 
come from an army chaplaincy to the pulpit here, and 
7107V Mr. Foster went from the pulpit to the chaplaincy. 
It shows something of one's meaning when he speaks of 
this church as a church militant. It has been a strong 
patriot church from the beginning. For years men 
worshipped on the Sabbath with their muskets in their 
hands. Many of our members died by Indian bar- 
barities. The siege of Louisburg took some. The 
French and Indian war consumed them like stubble. 
Our men swelled the Colonial forces during all the 
struggle from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, to say nothing 
of those among us who gave their lives to the country 
and to God between the years 1861 and 1865, and now 
after the dismissal of Mr. Foster the military took 
precedence of the ecclesiastical. It was the colonel and 
the governor before it was the minister, the soldier 

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before the saint. The men of the place shouldered the 
musket, and tramped to Long Island, to Bennington, 
to Saratoga and to Valley Forge, while the women and 
the girls struggled to earn their daily bread at home, 
and to send a bit to their husbands and fathers and 
older brothers in the army. They could not have a 
minister here for two reasons. First, if there was one 
they wanted he was probably in the army, and second, 
if perchance there was an available man they were too 
poor to give him a support. The church as an 
organization languished for a time, but at length the 
army triumphed and peace came. 

Men came back from the war in 1783, and in that 
same year the Rev. John Thompson was invited to this 
pastorate. Hitherto the church had gone westward for 
their pastor, now they went eastward. The name of 
Thompson was in high and honorable repute over in 
what is now Cumberland County. There the Rev. Mr. 
Thompson had been born. From there he had gone to 
Harvard College, where he had graduated in 1765. 
Thence he had gone back and served for some years as 
minister in the town of Standish and now this people of 
Berwick, who had passed through so much, and who 
had been fighting Indians and Frenchmen and English 
through so many generations, and having conquered 
these parties one after the other and achieved their 
independence, feeling the thrill of exultation born of 
victory, called to their pastorate the Rev. John Thomp- 
son, and he came. The church at this time was in an 
exceedingly weak and reduced condition. It could not 
be otherwise. For more than nine years not one 

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conimunicaiit had been added, and men and women had 
been dying all the time, and yet this little company, 
thrilled now with its new sense of freedom and stirred 
with the thought of what they could do in the changed 
political state, issued their call to Mr. Thompson, and 
he came. It was an a<5l of strong faith on their part, 
both in God and in Mr. Thompson. It was an act of 
strong faith on his part, both in God and in them. 
The faith of both parties was justified. Under the 
faithful, sunny, genial and very often witty words and 
work of Mr. Thompson the church grew, and pros- 
perity came again. Here the man lived and labored in 
storm and calm, year in and year out, for forty-five 
winters and summers, and then died as his predecessors 
Wade and Wise had done w'ith his pulpit gown around 
him. He left not alone a mourning church, but a 
posterity which has lived in the land and blessed it 
unto this day. It was during his life that this house 
was built, and the weekly gathering of the Congrega- 
tional society was changed from Old Fields to this spot. 
Mr. Thompson had been feeble for several years, and in 
1824 the church gave him a colleague. Rev. George W. 
Campbell. Mr. Campbell performed the harder and 
more burdensome toils of the ministry until the latter 
part of the year 1828, when he deemed it wise to 
withdraw from a pastorate where he did not have the 
full and unlimited control. He resigned and a council 
was called for his dismissal. This council met and 
discharged its duty on the very day when council and 
church and parish and town had gathered to observe 
the funeral rites, to pay the last sad honors, and to shed 

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their tears at the grave of Mr. Thompson whom they 
had loved so long and well. Could Mr. Campbell 
have foreseen it he surely would not have resigned 
at that time, for it left a church doubly bereaved and 
sorrowful. 

The death of Mr. Thompson was a turning point in 
the history of the church. The life, the country and 
all conditions of church affairs had become changed. 
Different denominations had sprung into being. Sedts 
were multiplying. Religious interests had grown 
various. The old church of the puritans had been rent 
in twain. Harvard College, which had always edu- 
cated our ministers, went the way the Berwick church 
did not go, and Mr. Thompson was the last man from 
Harvard who ever held this pastorate. The Rev. Mr. 
Keeler from Middlebury College, class of 1826, and of 
Andover Seminary, '29, came here at once, and was 
ordainded in Odtober of that same year. Mr. Keeler 
was an able and very useful man, and became eminent 
in his profession, holding few but long and prominent 
pastorates. He was here about seven years, and 
during that time more than one hundred members were 
received into fellowship in the church. He was dis- 
missed, and succeeded by the Rev. Andrew Rankin, 
in March, 1837. 

The scribe of the council that installed Mr. Rankin 
was a young man who had lately come to Durham, N. 
H., the Rev. Dr. Tobey. Mr. Rankin's ministry may 
possibly be remembered by some of the older persons 
among us. He was an earnest preacher. The faith 
was in his blood, for he was a Scotchman born and 

[21] 



Historical Address. 



bred, a true disciple of John Knox, and well knew how 
to make the word of God the sword of the Spirit. The 
deacons of the church at this time were Asa Hunting, 
John Plumer and Andrew Goodwin. The list of 
deacons of this church has in it twenty-four names, just 
one-fourth of which are Goodwins. Mr. Rankin was 
dismissed at his own request in April, 1840. He not 
only received the warm commendation of the dismissing 
council, but the church at a meeting presided over by 
the late Hon. John P. Lord gave him warm testi- 
monials of affe(5lion and confidence. 

The church now sent to Andover Seminary for a 
successor to Mr. Rankin, and Andover sent them one of 
her students who had not yet graduated, Mr. William 
Bradford Homer. He completed his course, accepted 
the call here, and was ordained in November, 1840. 
He died the following March, having barely completed 
his twenty-fourth year, and his grave at Mt. Auburn is 
still a place of pilgrimage. Bright and sunny, able and 
earnest as a preacher, another Dr. Payson if there was 
one, was this Mr. Homer. He was even at twenty-four 
a man of much performance as well as one of large 
promise. His instrudlor, Prof. Park of the Seminary, 
prepared a memorial volume of him bearing testimony 
to his very unusual gifts and graces. South Berwick 
had put her hand upon a rare and choice man, and 
taken him to her heart. Perhaps no other man in the 
christian ministry of New England at the age of 
twenty-four would have been so large a loss. He won 
the affe(5lion of this people as I think no one since the 
days of Mr. Wade had done. The whole town loved 

[22] 



Historical Jt ddress. 



him. No one approached him except to love him, and 
to be drawn nearer to God because of the conta<5t with 
him. This people would, to use the Apostle's words, 
almost have plucked out their eyes for him. They did 
renovate and richly repair the church because of their 
love for the man. I well remember descending from 
the pulpit on one of the first days of my own ministry 
here and saying to a little knot of men who had kindly 
gathered in the aisle to shake hands with me, "I wish 
that pulpit might be altered in some way. It is 
different from anything I am used to, and it stifles me." 
One brother looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, but 
with an earnest voice, and replied as he pointed to the 
desk, "That pulpit, that pjilpit, why we built that 
pulpit for Bradford Homer, and do you suppose we 
shall change it for you!" He felt in his way what I 
came to feel in mine that if that was Bradford Homer's 
pulpit it was an honor and a privilege to any man to 
stand behind it. There are ministers whom to succeed 
is a kind of patent of spiritual nobility. There are men 
who seem to hallow the very ground upon which they 
walk, and such an one was Bradford Homer. Not only 
has the church since 1840 been a church of higher life 
and finer spirit, but every minister here has been a 
better preacher and a better teacher of Jesus Christ 
because of the abiding influence of the six months' 
pastorate of that good man. 

We reach now the days (and the reign too I may 
call it) of the Rev. B. R. Allen. It behooves me to be 
a little cautious now for I am approaching a period 
well remembered by many, and the sails of one's fancy 

[23] 



Historical Jkddress. 



must not be too widely spread when the next man's 
memory is the rudder of the vessel. Mr. Allen was 
installed here in October, 1842, and was pastor for 
twelve years. He was not trained in any of the 
schools, but was apprenticed in early life (as I have 
been told) to the trade of a blacksmith. But he was a 
scholar for all that. Roger Sherman lifted himself 
from the shoemaker's bench to the judge's bench, and 
Mr. Allen lifted himself fully as far, from the forge to 
the pulpit, from the moulding of iron to the moulding 
of souls. After leaving here and going to Marblehead 
he writes in this waj^ of himself, "Education both 
Academical and Theological in my own study. I am, 
however, by an a(5t of special grace an adopted son both 
of Amherst and Dartmouth Colleges, the former giving 
me the degree of A. M. in 1842, and the latter the same 
degree in 1854." It is certainly a rare instance. But 
Mr. Allen was a man of such intense personality and of 
such vigor of intelleCl that no circumstances whatever 
could suppress him. It was not the iron on the anvil 
that could keep him down, because the far stronger 
iron in his blood would push him up. No hostile 
environment could check him, for he was strong and 
creative enough to make his own environment. Born 
in Rhode Island, his ministry was in the States of 
Rhode Island, Maine and Massachusetts, and his 
reputation was far wider than they. His work here 
was exceedingly useful and spiritually fruitful, al- 
though he did not always find his resting place a bed of 
roses. In 1850 the question of slavery was a burning 
question in every northern church. It touched and 

[24] 



Historical Jl ddre ss. 



stirred them as the wind touches and stirs every grass 
blade in the field. It was here and it stirred the pastor, 
but it did not stir him sympathetically, it stirred him in 
opposition. Mr. Allen was a logicia?i. He was a firm 
believer in the old dodtrine of Federal Headship, and 
he reasoned in this way. If it is right for God to send 
the whole race of mankind to hell for the sin of Adam, 
as it certainly is, why then of course it is right that 
every black man should be sent into slavery because of 
the sin of Ham. On the other hand he was not a 
logician, because if he had been he would have 
reasoned in this way, Jesus Christ died to save the 
world from the consequences of Adam's sin, and I am 
preaching and laboring as hard as I can to save men 
from these consequences. Why should I not preach 
and strive just as hard to save suffering slaves from the 
consequences of Ham's sin. The abolitionist's position 
was one of better logic than Mr. Allen's, and I have no 
doubt that during the war he denied his own earlier 
faith and became an abolitionist. The man's face is 
hanging on the wall in our vestry, and it is a face we 
all love to look at. His memory is held in high honor. 
The pastorate of Mr. Emerson, Mr. Allen's suc- 
cessor, was a very brief one, lasting little more than a 
year. He was a brilliant preacher, and was soon called 
from this to a much larger church in Massachusetts, 
and then the church remembering the greatness of 07ie 
Allen said; "Let us try to get another Allen — there is 
something in a name." They tried, and succeeded. 
In December, 1858, the Rev. E. W. Allen was installed, 
and remained pastor till May, 1865. I think those 

[25] 



Historical Jf d d re ss. 



years from '58 to '65 must have been hard years for a 
clergyman, for the civil war was on, and men from 
every hamlet in the country were dying on the battle- 
field. Hearts were rent and sore everywhere. The 
land was in mourning. It was the sternest, the 
grandest, the most magnificent chapter of American 
history. Even the Revolution grows pale in contrast. 
It was a time that tried the souls of men, ministers and 
people alike. The thoughts of men were not at home. 
But Mr. Allen was both a patriot and a christian. He 
preached and prayed for the country, and he preached 
and prayed for souls. The congregation was divided, 
part of it here and a part of it in the South. But the 
hearts and thoughts of this part of it were all with the 
warriors and the toilers there. It is wonderful that any 
church growth could be made under such circum- 
stances, and yet under his faithful work some thirty- 
five persons joined the church during his ministry. 

Mr. Allen left, and was followed in May, 1866, by 
the Rev. Sylvanus Hayward, who wrought here for 
seven years with head, and heart, and hand in a most 
devoted, and in a well-appreciated manner. The 
church will long remember him. Mr. Hayward is too 
near at hand to allow of my making any remarks 
touching himself, but I will say that his name closes a 
list of truly great names. Not many of them, just a 
dozen, the perfedt number of scripture, twelve minis- 
ters, like the twelve patriarchs or the twelve apostles of 
old, have wrought and shaped what has been a truly 
great and influential church history, and not one of the 

[26] 



Historical Jt d d re s s . 



twelve names is more highlj^ regarded than is that of 
Rev. Mr. Hayward. 

Mr. Greenleaf in his comments on the Berwick 
church remarks "It has never been large, but it has 
always been very respedlable." He must have used 
the word respedtable in the same sense that Daniel 
Webster always used it, for we do not give our ancestry 
due credit if we do not say that they were great. This 
church from the beginning was one of commanding 
influence, and I do not believe that there is another 
church in the United States that has no more names 
upon its roll than this one has, that can show a larger 
number of those who have been influential in shaping 
the fortunes of state and legislation, of college and 
pulpit and bar, of teacher's desk and lecturer's plat- 
form and professor's chair and author's study, than our 
own. Respectable! It has stood always for the highest 
things, and has given of itself to the great world and to 
God. The prayer of those who founded it in the day of 
Mr. Wade that it might build and shape the institu- 
tions of the future has been richly answered. 

The parish of Unity is territorially the same as 
Berwick. Berwick did not become the official designa- 
tion until by an order of the General Court of 
Massachusetts in 1713, all above Thompson's brook was 
ere<5ted into a town by that name, and the next year the 
town sent to the General Court, as its representative, 
Elisha Plaisted. In 1669 Kittery voted in Town 
Meeting to lay out one hundred and fifty acres of land 
in each division of the town for the use of the minister. 
The lot falling to this parish under that vote was, I 

[27] 



Historical Jtddress 



suppose, that field wherein is the old cemetery, running 
southward up over the hillside beyond the school 
house. The parsonage and the church were no doubt 
located at that time, and it is almost certain that a 
house of worship was at once built, thirty years and 
more previous to the organization of the church proper. 
Mr. Greenleaf in his history states positively that a 
meeting house was built quite near the place where the 
present meeting house stands. This "present meeting 
house" being of course that one in which the church 
worshipped previous to occupying the one where we are 
now gathered. That house stood not far away from the 
present site of the No. 2 school house, a little way up 
the hill on the road that runs past Mr. Allen Warren's 
house. Our present house of worship was erecfled in or 
about the year 1S25, though religious services were not 
holden in it till 1828. This suggests a chapter of 
history wherein there must have been more or less 
fridtion among the people, and this state of temporary 
fridtion came about naturally enough. Up to the 
middle of the eighteenth century i/ie tonni was down 
there. There were farm houses scattered all along 
through the region up towards the Great Falls within 
reach of the river, built like block houses for prote(5lion 
against the savages, but the thicker settlement, the real 
town, was at Old Fields. The town grew, however, 
and grew in this dire(5lion until one hundred years ago 
this se(5lion had become the larger end. It was perfedlly 
natural that as this sedlion grew to be larger and more 
important commercially than that, it should desire, as 
majorities always do, the privileges, emoluments and 

[28] 



Historical Jfdd re s s. 



benefits pertaining to a numerical superiority. That 
part of the town would equally of course hold on upon 
their old and prescribed rights with great tenacity. 
How keen this rivalry was between the two divisions of 
the town I do not know, but there was no doubt quite 
enough for comfort. This part of the town, when it 
came to be a question of building the new church, 
would say to that part, "We are the larger. Let us 
have the church up here. Here are four people to your 
two to go to church on Sunday. It is right that the 
new church should be located in this sedlion where the 
people are." Then that end of the town would retort, 
"Here is where the church has always been. This is 
the historic and sacred spot, and when it comes Sunday 
morning it is no harder for four people to go two miles 
to the church than it is for two people to go two miles. 
It is no further from there down here than it is from 
here up there. Here now is the church, and here the 
church ought to stay." There must have been, I say, 
in the nature of the case more or less of this feeling of 
rivalry between the two ends of the town. When in 
about 1790 it was proposed to establish an academy here 
and the Hon. Mr. Chadbourne was willing to give a lot 
for the building, he took cognizance of this feeling, and 
hoped, no doubt, that by giving this end of the town 
the academy he should alia}- and perhaps entirely wipe 
out the rising demand for the church to be brought up 
here. It did not seem to him as though the village 
could in justice ask for everything. He was disap- 
pointed, however. The village was not content to take 
the school and say nothing more about the church. 

[29] 



Historical Jt d d re s s . 



The request for the church was not withdrawn, and 
when it was built it was built here. All ill feeling 
speedily subsided for the people at Old Fields were 
very sensible folk and they clearly saw that had the 
church stuck to its old habitat it would inevitably 
have perished. There is a certain spirit of worldly 
wisdom to w'hich even the church is amenable. 

For seventy-five years this has been the church. 
Here have gathered the saints for devine worship, and 
here for generations have risen to God the prayers of 
his people. 

To-day on our two hundredth anniversary we see 
but little in the past to occasion regret. We see a great 
deal to call forth our thanksgiving. We thank God for 
the fathers and mothers of this church who gave it a 
a being, and for their descendents who through long 
generations have given to it their loyal love. To love 
the church means to love both God and man, and the 
whole world is the better for these historic lovers of the 
church. W^e thank God for the ministers who have 
preached and labored here. It is not enough for us to 
say their record is on high. Their record is written here 
as well. They have contributed to the new earth as 
well as to the new heaven. With one exception (Rev. 
Mr. Hayward) they have gone to their home in the 
skies. But we are glad and grateful to God that that 
one is with us to-day. He represents them all, and the 
garland of roses he brings he has plucked from the 
eleven pastorates that went before him. May God bless 
him and continue him long in the laud that the land 
itself may be blessed. 

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LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 



013 996 807 4 C 



